Page 38 of Possessive Mate

“Elena, wait!” Eddie called after her but like hell she would. She had lost all respect for her brother's instructions the second he left another man to die.

“Is everyone okay?” Elena asked, examining the group up and down as she descended the porch steps.

Jack was before her immediately, gripping her forearms. “We're fine. What's the matter?”

Elena gulped hard. She sniffed. There was no scent of blood. These guys hadn't been fighting. There was no sign of Hanson. Yet, desperately, she asked, “Where is Hanson?”

The scowl that darkened Jack's face told Elena all she needed to know. He looked over her shoulder at Eddie and growled, “I thought he was with you.”

Elena cringed as her brother walked down the steps and joined her.

“We ran into complications.”

“Complications?” Elena blurted incredulously. She whipped on her brother, shoving him hard in the chest. “We left a packmate behind because you refused to help him!”

Eddie grabbed her arms, but she was too furious. She released herself quickly from his grip and shoved him again.

Taking a step back, Eddie narrowed his gaze and growled, “Elena, shove me one more time and so help me—"

“Enough!” Jack snapped and all fell silent. It was only then that Elena realized all the senior men of the pack had gathered around them, all save Hanson.

She shuddered. She had seen him with these guys so many times, laughing and joking and being brothers, out on the lawn and in the dining room and on patrol.

His absence pained her immeasurably. What she wouldn't give to see him disappearing around the corner of the manor right now in an attempt to avoid her.

“What happened?” Jack asked again, looking to Eddie. Elena seethed.

“We got Elena out of the barn easy enough, but three of Christopher's wolves attacked. Hanson ordered me to get Elena out of there, and so I did.”

“Since when do you take orders from an omega?” Elena snarled at him. The man standing before her was no longer her brother.

“Since he was right!” Eddie hissed back at her, squaring his shoulders. “You were weakened by silver. Hell, you were so weak you couldn't even get out of my arms. They’d have ripped you apart!”

“At least we wouldn't have left a good man behind!” Elena said, vexed beyond anything she had ever felt before. She moved to shove her brother again, but Will stepped in the way.

There had been a time long ago, when she was just a young she-wolf, that she had been extremely attracted to the one often believed to be the most handsome in Jack's pack, but now he disgusted her with the way he protected her brother.

“We have to go back,” Elena said, turning on Jack. If she couldn't beat the crap out of her useless brother, then she sure as hell was going to fight for Hanson.

“Is he all you care about?” Eddie said, his voice seething as much as her own.

The others glanced amongst each other. The siblings had never fought like this before. Had they really grown so far apart?

“Everyone else is here, safe,” Elena said, turning on him again. “Who else am I supposed to care about? Fool!”

Eddie took an aggressive half-step forward as if to give her a taste of her own medicine, but this time it was Jack who stepped in the way.

“Elena is right,” the alpha said. “We have to go back for him.”

“He might be on his way back here right now!” Eddie protested.

“Sure, he might be,” Jack shrugged. “He may also not be. And we don't leave a man behind.”

Though angry with her brother, she did feel some sympathy for him at the guilt that swept his face when his alpha gave him the sternest look imaginable.

“Kane, go get the others,” Jack instructed without so much as glancing at the tattooed wolf. “We're going to need backup.”

"Backup? Christopher won't know we're coming! Who's to say Hanson isn't already gone?” Eddie asked, and Elena cringed. Her brother truly had changed.

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